| The importance of Heathrow |
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| Written by David Cuthbertson | |
| Monday, 13 August 2007 | |
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The worst airport I've ever flown out of is Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City)
in Vietnam. It was clearly designed by communists to crush the spirit
of anyone wanting to leave their Socialist Utopia. The second worst is
Heathrow. LHR does not have the same hopeless bleakness but it's not too far off. The airport is overcrowded and falling to pieces in places. The rest of it is poorly designed and in desperate need of investment. Heathrow badly needs Terminal 5 - which is due to open in 2008 - and Terminal 6, which is still in the early planning stages. Passenger capacity is only one problem and a third runway will be needed long before the 2020 date suggested by the Government's recent white paper. A recent study commissioned by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to find out why New York was losing business to London revealed that the only thing that business people disliked about London was Heathrow. Even Ken Livingstone has said that the current state of the airport "is shaming London." BAA, which owns the airport, is in trouble. The competition commission is threatening to break up the organisation which owns all off the airports in London. It's parent company, Ferrovial, brought the airport largely with borrowed cash and rising interest rates are stretching it's budget. Protesters are threatening to stage incursions and it is still being crushed under the weight of government planning regulations. A recent Economist article makes the case for the break up of BAA and that looks increasingly like it will happen. As the article says, that will be a start, but not an end, to the process of improving Heathrow. Other countries, like Australia and New Zealand, have even encouraged competition within airports - with airlines owning their own terminals for instance. Deregulation should also follow the breaking up of the BAA monopoly, since competitive markets are much better at directing investment and balancing price and service than regulators. Sorting out Heathrow is very important and it is something that has to be done right. Why then is the government allowing a tiny number of protesters to hold back progress and imposing unnecessarily severe security conditions?
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